Robo-Advisory Services

Robo-advisors were supposed to be the future of investing. We believed that too when we launched Sarwa. But here’s what the last few years taught us , and why we evolved. From Ellevest selling to Betterment, to SixPark shutting down, to Wealthsimple pulling out of the US and UK…Even Wealthfront taking 14 years and $50 billion in assets to finally reach profitability. What went wrong? 1. They all looked the same Most robos offered the same 60/40 ETF portfolios. Low-cost, passive, and nearly identical. 2. The math didn’t work They spent like consumer brands but earned like utilities. Thin margins. Slow growth. Acquisition costs that only made sense in bull markets. 3. They misunderstood emotion Set it and forget it sounded smart. But money is emotional. Clients didn’t want to hear "do nothing" during market crashes. They wanted education, support, and someone to talk to. Clients weren't afraid, and saw opportunities. 4. They stopped building After launch, many robos froze. No new tools. No product velocity. No crypto. No options trading. No private markets. 5. They underestimated retail investors Robos assumed people wanted to sit in the back seat. But most wanted the wheel. Some automation, yes. But not blind autopilot. They wanted to learn, act, and take control. At Sarwa, we pioneered and still offer automated investing, and it works wonders for many clients. But we also saw the limits of robo-only models. So we built on top of it. - We added relationships. Expert advice from licensed professionals. Community events. - Trading tools. - New asset classes. We gave people more control and better ways to take action. What I learned along the way: 1) Don’t assume you know what customers want. Talk to them early and often. 2) Be ready to let go of the original idea. 3) Speed and feedback matter more than polish. Ship fast. Learn faster. We used to think automation was the product. Turns out, it was empowerment. Give customers the wheel. Our job is to build the best car.

𝐀𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐢𝐠 𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐄𝐱𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐨 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞—𝐈𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐫𝐚 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝? UBS is shutting down its robo-advisor, UBS Advice Advantage, this month. That makes three major exits in under 12 months— Goldman Sachs, JPMorganChase, and now UBS —all backing away from the direct-to-consumer digital advice model they once pitched as the future. 📉 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐫 𝐓𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞? UBS had already closed new robo accounts back in March. Now it’s winding down the entire platform. This follows UBS’s failed 2022 bid to acquire Wealthfront for $1.4B—a deal that would’ve put it ahead of most traditional firms in the space. Their original robo launched in 2018 with help from SigFig, but it never gained meaningful scale. 📊 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐞 Global robo AUM hit ~$1.8T in 2025—but most of that is concentrated in just a few hybrid models. Vanguard Personal Advisor Services has $344B AUM vs. only $21B for its pure digital offering. Client behavior is clear: automation is great, but they still want a human involved. 🔀 𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧? Goldman Sachs sold off Marcus Invest accounts to Betterment. Ellevest handed off its automated investing clients to Betterment as well. Meanwhile, Robinhood launched its own version of a robo, blending active stock strategies with automation—proving there’s still room for creative models. ⚠️ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 Robo isn’t “dead”—but it’s no longer a standalone business. It’s a feature, not a strategy. The hybrid model isn’t just winning—it’s defining the category. Advisors and firms need to stop viewing robos as competitors and start treating them as components of a broader digital-first client experience. 📌 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 Don’t chase scale with a stripped-down robo. Run your advisory business like a high-efficiency operating platform—with automation where it matters and human insight where it counts. #wealthmanagement #financialadvisors #financialplanning #technology #artificialintelligence #digitaladvice #roboadvisor #RIAtech #wealthtech

🤖 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼-𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘀: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄!   I am happy to share my new working paper “𝙁𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙍𝙤𝙗𝙤-𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙞𝙨𝙤𝙧𝙨: 𝘼 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙝𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙁𝙪𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝘿𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨” co-authored with Mustafa Nourallah, PhD, Peter Öhman, and Duc Khuong Nguyen. Financial Robo-Advisors (FRAs) enable households to participate in financial markets with a limited amount of money and without time or place constraints. While FRAs can help investors overcome behavioural biases, they also have disadvantages, such as relying on a limited number of inputs and lacking individualization. We conducted a systematic literature review on the nascent research on FRAs to synthesize previous research results. We identify two streams of literature: (1) 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁, which focuses on designing FRAs and improving the functioning of these machine advisors, and (2) 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲, which investigates technology adoption and issues related to biased advice. Among other topics, future research should address 𝙬𝙝𝙮 𝙁𝙍𝘼𝙨 𝙙𝙤 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙡 𝙩𝙤 𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚, who likely would benefit more than others from using FRAs and 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙇𝙖𝙧𝙜𝙚 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙈𝙤𝙙𝙚𝙡𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙂𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝘼𝙄 to enhance user interaction. 👉 Link to the working paper on SSRN: https://lnkd.in/gT6vxPNt

A 24-year-old in Srinagar or Salem can enter income, age, and goals into a phone app and get a portfolio recommendation in seconds. Most revolutions in finance don’t announce themselves with noise. They slip quietly into the apps on your phone. Robo-advisory is one of them. A few years ago, investment advice meant face-to-face meetings, paper files, and a “trusted uncle” figure who guided families. And today Robo- finance is on the edge. That’s not just speed. That’s access. It matters in a country where less than 3% of people invest in equity, and financial literacy is still uneven. Robo-advisors can scale advice at a fraction of the cost. They can rebalance portfolios on time. They don’t carry bias about which product pays higher commission. But finance is not only maths. It is also emotion. It is family obligations that stretch across three generations. It is fear when markets fall, and discipline when greed takes over. And no algorithm can sit with a retiree and explain why not touching their emergency fund matters more than chasing the latest IPO. So here’s where I believe the opportunity lies. Use machines to democratise advice, cut cost, and widen inclusion. Use humans to contextualise risk, build trust, and guide behaviour. Leaders who design systems blending the two will redefine wealth management for India’s next decade. Not man versus machine. But precision plus perspective. What would you trust with your family’s money speed alone, or speed combined with wisdom? #Finance #Leadership #WealthManagement #FutureOfWork

The whole “robo lost the war to human advisers” narrative is one of the most revealing tells in our industry. It’s not that robo-advice failed. It’s that once you automate the traditional advice process, you expose how thin the "core value" actually is. Robo did a brutally honest thing: it took the visible bits advisers claimed as their value, risk profiling, asset allocation, rebalancing, product selection, and showed that, when you strip away the coffee, charisma and sales theatre, those elements are largely commoditised. 💰The fact that clients still "prefer" humans doesn’t prove the old process was strong; it proves that what made it tolerable was relationship, narrative and emotional containment layered on top of a weak underlying engine.💰 So this so‑called “lost war” is really a diagnostic: ➡️. It shows that a lot of advice was distributed and implemented under the guise ofstrategy. ➡️. It highlights that the real value lies in behaviour, decision architecture and household context, not in picking a balanced fund and generating a glossy SOA. ➡️. It forces the industry to confront that if all you offer is what a robo can automate, you "should" be worried. What has to change (and is starting to) is the core brief: from “build and maintain a portfolio” to “identify and systematically close the gap between what this household "should" do and what they "actually will" do.” Robo v3 is not about scaling the old process. It’s about using data, behavioural insight and intelligent triage to: ➡️. Understand how specific clients really behave under uncertainty. ➡️. Design structures, defaults and coaching to keep them on track. ➡️. Escalate to humans when complexity or emotion genuinely requires it. In that light, Roboodidn’t lose. It simply made it impossible for us to keep pretending that the traditional advice process, as‑is, was delivering deep, differentiated value. The scalar thinking in the concept of "winning the war" is evident in related articles where the focus is on FUM growth. As v3.0 emerges that thinking is akin to the Polish cavalry discovering tanks in 1939. The “war” had to be lost for the value proposition to evolve. #superannuation #retirement #wealthmanagement

When deciding how to manage your investments—whether through a financial advisor, a robo-advisor, or DIY investing—it’s important to weigh the pros and cons based on your personal goals, financial complexity, and comfort level with investing. Here's a breakdown: ✅ Financial Advisor Pros: 🔹 Personalized advice: Tailored to your full financial picture (goals, taxes, estate planning, retirement, insurance). 🔹 Behavioral coaching: Helps you avoid emotional decisions like panic selling or FOMO buying. 🔹 Accountability: Keeps you on track with saving, investing, and long-term planning. 🔹 Complex planning: Ideal for high-net-worth individuals, business owners, or those with multiple income streams or estate needs. Cons: - Higher fees: Typically 1% of assets under management (AUM), or hourly/project fees. - Quality varies: Not all advisors are fiduciaries (some may have commission-based incentives). - Access/time: Personalized means slower; meetings take time and may not be available 24/7. 🤖 Robo-Advisor Pros: 🔹 Low cost: Fees usually range from 0.25% to 0.50% AUM. 🔹 Easy access: Fast onboarding, minimal human interaction needed. 🔹 Automatic rebalancing: Keeps your portfolio aligned with your risk profile. 🔹 Tax-loss harvesting: Many offer it automatically to reduce taxable gains. Cons: - Limited personalization: Only as good as the questionnaire; may not handle complex financial situations. - No emotional guidance: Lacks human support during market downturns or big life decisions. - Generic planning: Great for basic retirement goals but not estate or small business planning. 🧠 Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Investing Pros: 🔹 Full control: You choose every asset, strategy, and timing. 🔹 Lowest cost: No advisor fees; you only pay fund or brokerage fees. 🔹 Educational: Helps you learn how markets work and build confidence over time. Cons: - Time-intensive: Research, monitoring, and decision-making fall entirely on you. - Risk of mistakes: Emotional decisions or lack of diversification can hurt performance. - No planning support: Harder to align investments with taxes, insurance, estate needs, or multi-goal planning. 🔍 Which is Best for You? 1. You're a high-income professional with complex financial needs ➡️ Financial Advisor 2. You're new to investing and want low-cost, hands-off solutions ➡️ Robo-Advisor 3. You enjoy learning about finance and have the time/discipline ➡️ DIY Investing 4. You want tax strategies, multi-generational planning, or business succession help ➡️ Financial Advisor 5. You have under $100k and just want to grow long-term wealth affordably ➡️ Robo-Advisor or DIY If you’re a first-generation high earner or building generational wealth, many find hybrid models (financial advisor + tech tools) most valuable—leveraging both guidance and efficiency.

Morningstar’s 2025 Robo-Advisor Report paints a fascinating picture. Nearly two decades after robo-advisors were tipped to upend financial planning, the great disruption never arrived. Instead, the technology has been absorbed by incumbents. Pure robo platforms, those offering no human interaction, are now rare. Most are either owned by large financial institutions or have integrated human advice into their service models. The challenges have been telling: - Scale has proven difficult. Digital-only models struggled to attract enough assets to be sustainable. - Cost pressures remain strong. While robo fees are lower than traditional advice, the best offerings still require significant scale to keep pricing competitive. - Transparency issues persist. Some providers still offer little clarity on portfolio construction, underlying investments, or true total costs. - Client needs have evolved. Many investors want hybrid experiences that combine the efficiency of algorithms with the reassurance of human judgement. For me, the big takeaway is that the “robo” story is less about replacing human advisors and more about transforming advice delivery. The winners are those that combine low-cost, automated portfolios with access to skilled human support, robust planning tools and clear value. The future of digital advice may be less about algorithms in isolation and more about how we integrate them into trusted, holistic advice models. What do you think, will we ever see a true robo-only revolution, or has the hybrid model already won? Click below for a copy of the research. Ashley Wang, CIMA® Jonathan Morgan Luke Elliott Mark Hoven Emma Roylett Mark McPhee Michelle Cameron https://lnkd.in/gmGpEvqH #WealthManagement #DigitalAdvice #Fintech #RoboAdvisor #MorningstarResearch